Stamp from Leopold and Loeb murder ransom note, Harold S. Hulbert Papers, University Archives

Feb. 26, 2009

1905 Marching Band

What's New? | Featured Collection | Monthly Highlight
Archives Tip | Upcoming Exhibit

What's New?:
Archivist Kevin Leonard in The Daily: The Daily Northwestern recently profiled University Archivist Kevin Leonard. Read the article here.
NBN on the Life-Saving Station: North By Northwestern explores the history of Northwestern's life-saving station and crew. Read the article here and view a short video.

Featured Collection:
1968 Student Protests: Forty years ago, while demonstrations, sit-ins, and student activism were sweeping the nation's campuses, Northwestern was home to a notable moment of its own. From May 3-4, 1968, a group of African-American students, organized by For Members Only and the Afro-American Student Union, occupied the school's business office at 619 Clark Street to protest what they characterized as the school's lack of response to an April 22 set of demands to the administration. This was the first time the administration was faced with this type of student action and it would go on to have lasting impact, particularly in the push for an African-American studies department and increased African-American enrollment. Take a look at photos, listen to audio recordings, and read primary and secondary accounts in our exhibit.

This Month's Highlight:
There is a photo that has often been used in NU publications—a picture of the University (Marching) Band in the 1905 Syllabus. It is notable because the band was already integrated at this time and two African-American musicians are pictured. The caption lists a W. E. Keeton as one of these two men, but for years the Archives had been unable to learn more about him. Now, thanks to a serendipitous call from Professor Leta Miller of the University of Santa Cruz, we are now able to link Keeton's student career at Northwestern with his later work on the WPA Federal Music Project. Read the full story on the Archives' blog.

Tip of the Month:
Archives Tutorials: The Northwestern University Archives has created a series of video tutorials providing an overview of archival repositories and primary source research. The four short sections cover what an archives is, how to plan research, how to locate archival sources, and what a university archives does. Based on presentations originally produced by Janet Olson, Assistant University Archivist, the videos were formatted, recorded, and edited by Jason Nargis, Project Archivist. Try them out and learn about using the archives.

Upcoming Exhibit:
Leopold and Loeb: “The Murder that Wouldn’t Die: Leopold & Loeb in Artifact, Fact and Fiction” will run from March 3 to April 30 on the main floor of the Northwestern University Library. Among the featured artifacts from Northwestern University Library, many from the Archives' collection, are the original ransom note that Leopold and Loeb sent to Bobby Franks’ parents, the original transcripts of the confessions they made shortly after their arrest, the psychiatric and medical evaluations ordered by legendary attorney Clarence Darrow, who saved them from execution, and one of only two original transcripts of the trial. For more information on the exhibit, read the press release.

The Archives has nearly 1000 processed collections and thousands of linear feet of material. Browsing our website can help inspire choices of topics for research or general-interest purposes. Check our Finding Aids site for information about processed collections; our History and Traditions pages and Exhibits sites provide some great ideas; and browse through past entries in our This Day in NU History for items that pique your interest. As most of our holdings are not listed in the library catalogue, we encourage inquiries by those looking for primary source documents.

A sampling of topics pursued in the past month include:

Immigration in the 1930s and 1940s
Northwestern's perpetual scholarships
Early views on eugenics

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University Archives
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Email: archives@northwestern.edu
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